“With life, spirit comes into play.”

For millions of years, before there was life, there was just God and a barren universe.

“You felt all alone?”

Yes, I wanted more. In retrospect, the inanimate years feel very lonely. The emergence of life is a delight. With life, spirit comes into play. Wonderful to see amoeba, moss, and so forth. The frogs (and other creatures), each with a soul and personality, each in a sense in tune with God. I can play with the animals, “walk among them.” I love their myriad forms. I am not alone anymore.

The creatures that began to stir on the earth are amazing, more amazing than anything that had yet occurred in creation. They move on their own, they have “internal principles of motion” as Aristotle said, have dramatic lives—even the worms and fishes.

There is birth, growth, death, mating, offspring, colonies and flocks, emergent social orders—ideality as well. There is telos and purpose, success and failure, standards of perfection and imperfection.

And, over time, further developments in the species, a most amazing, creative ramifying of the evolutionary ladder. New species emerge that could not have been imagined before. Your paleontology tells the story: the first horses could easily fit into the palm of a hand, and so forth. Can you imagine the spectacle?

What Other People Are Saying About the Book…

Once I finished a draft of the book, I asked people I knew – some I knew well and some I had only recently met -- to take a look and give me some quick comments. I pointedly did not ask for praise, but for “honest responses,” since only those would be helpful in editing the book. Here are excerpts from their comments.
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“This work has the potential to be the most influential book in our time. It exudes spiritual authenticity as it is well-grounded in human experience. It advances a way to embrace spirituality in oneself. As your own experience, the work is anchored in our time, our experience.”- Celeste Colgan, Ph.D. (English), former Deputy Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities

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“If there is a God, this is what he sounds like.”- Stephen H. Balch, Founding President, National Association of Scholars

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“Thanks for this wonderful gift. This is a remarkable document. I’m only two-thirds though, and I’m anxious to see how things turn out.”- Wesley Morriston, Ph.D. (Philosophy), Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder; Board Member, Society of Christian Philosophers)

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“I am reading your draft slowly as a devotional and am so full of thoughts and feelings about it that it is hard to know where to begin. I think this is very important. Much of it sounds like God to me, sounds like how what I take to be God sounds in those moments when I am in touch (and I am struck by how very in-touch you are, how constantly). The freshness of the talk, so fresh it makes you laugh -- I experience God that way. The wisdom. The love. The reproach when necessary (how God exits when ego enters).”- Jeanine Diller, Ph.D. (Philosophy), Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Toledo

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“It is one of the most intriguing, unusual, passionate things I have ever read. It is very special.”- Matthew Foster, Ph.D. (Theology), Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, Molloy College

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Copyright 2016 -
God: An Autobiography by Jerry L. Martin. - All Rights Reserved. - Content may not be used without permission of the author.